


Fairy Tales of Mechanicsburg

by khilari



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: I know the pairing is weird but it mostly makes sense in context, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-18 13:17:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8163329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khilari/pseuds/khilari
Summary: A collection of traditional tales in their Mechanicsburg variants. Starting with Snow White, as told by a Jäger and written down by a folklorist.





	1. Snow White

_While the Jäger who told it to me insisted this variant of Snow White was a traditional tale of Mechanicsburg I have to doubt its provenance. It seems to contain rumours of bioengineering among the various Storm Lord families that were not widely known until the Heterodyne Restoration and could not date back to much before the first Wulfenbach Empire at the earliest. However, while it may not be authentically old, one can hardly doubt it is authentically Mechanicsburg._

_— Amber Litten_

Once upon a time there was a Princess married to the Prince of a castle near Mechanicsburg. One day as she was sharpening a knife she cut her finger and ran to the window so her blood fell on the snow. Seeing it she sighed and said, ‘I wish for a son with skin as white as snow, hair as red as blood and eyes like ebony.’

She looked up from the snow and into the green eyes of a witch. ‘I can give you a child,’ said the witch. ‘But I cannot promise a son.’

The Princess agreed for even the chance of a son was a good chance for her, but the child was born a girl. Nevermind, the Princess thought, for a girl could be a bargaining piece and make a good marriage. So she raised her daughter to adulthood and taught her to be wary and cold as all that family were. Once the girl was a woman, though, her father died. The Princess wanted to make a new marriage herself, then, and her daughter became a rival, for she was prettier and her blood was as good.

The Princess sent her daughter out into the forest with a Smoke Knight dressed as a hunter and carrying a poisoned blade. The girl was given no weapons at all, but that was a mistake, for no one who wanted her to survive would send her unarmed on her family’s land. So she knew from the first she was being sent to her death. She acted all unknowing and picked flowers from the path as they walked — poison flowers — and made tea when they stopped for lunch — poison tea. Against a Smoke Knight I think she had to sip a little bit of it herself, so when she left him dead and ran into the forest she was already dizzy and sick.

She ran until she reached a little hut and then, too cold and sick to run further, she slipped inside and fainted on the floor.

Now in that hut were living seven Jägers. The Heterodyne was growing some experimental trees nearby and wanted them watched to make sure nothing ate them before their teeth grew in. Seven Jägers to watch trees! I think the Heterodyne must not have been pleased with them, yah?

Anyway, they came home and there was a pretty girl lying on the floor. So they put her into a bed and argued about what to do for sick humans until she woke up.

She was scared at first, the girl, but the Jägers were bored out there and not sad to have more company, and she had nowhere to go. They weren’t sure what their master would think of her, with her blood red hair, but they grew fond of her over time. She grew fond of them too. _Very_ fond. She had been a good girl before and a good princess, but that is lonely, and what did she have to lose? So they were all close and happy together and she slept in anyone’s bed she liked.

Food was difficult when winter came. The Jägers had not been sent with food, they would be bored enough to hunt their own, and they were not perhaps the smartest Jägers. Maybe that’s why they were out there, huh? They ate foxes and tree bark and weird construct animals. They tried to feed her the nice bits, but that’s still not good food for a human.

So, although she was not a stupid girl, when an old woman stopped by selling apples she maybe should have been more cautious.

She did keep the old woman outside the house and she tested the apple for poison as best she could. She fed a little bit to a mouse, even. But it was an apple made by the witch who had made her, and it would not have killed anyone else.

When the Jägers returned she was lying on the floor, stone dead.

They buried her in the snow and when new Jägers came to take over the guarding they found their brothers crying.

The Heterodyne was told and he came out with a lightning stick and he brought her back, there in the snow, and named her Snow White now that she was his. Her family all forgot her now she’d been dead, because that kind of silly thing matters to them, and she lived happily in Mechanicsburg until she died a death she couldn’t return from.


	2. Little Brother and Little Sister

_This variant of Little Brother and Little Sister is probably genuinely old. Indeed, I felt I was missing some context for it. Context the baker’s wife who told it to me either also lacked or did not feel like sharing. The Lord Heterodyne’s Hunters are likely Jägermonsters, but this does not explain their reaction to the transformed Little Brother even if they consider him another construct._

_— Amber Litten_

Little brother took his little sister by the hand and said, ‘Since you broke through our stepmother has not let us in the house. She beats us and barely feeds us. I fear she will tell the whole town and you have not yet built anything that could protect us. Let us run away.’

She looked at him with burning dreams in her eyes and assented.

They ran all day until they were into the twisted waste. The sister carried the corpses of animals in her hands and poked them back to life as they went, leaving them hissing and chittering among the trees. At night they slept in a dead tree.

All the next day they travelled in the hot sun and were thirsty, until finally they came to the river. The sister saw the haze on it and the dead trees around and said, ‘Do not drink! You will die!’ with command in her voice.

‘Very well, but I am so thirsty,’ said her brother. ‘Perhaps it will be safer downstream?’

Downstream the river was a bit less of itself but when the brother stopped to drink his sister saw the haze on it and the warped trees all around and said, ‘Do not drink! You will be changed and likely die!’

‘Very well, but if it is not safe further on I must drink anyway, for I am so thirsty I will die,’ said her brother.

Further down the river was less of itself, but still the birds on its banks showed teeth, and the girl said, ‘Do not drink! You will certainly be changed and may still die!’

But her brother had already stooped to the water and as soon as it passed his lips he wailed. The most terrible pain had come upon him. Soon he lay unconscious on the bank, body twisting and warping. The girl pulled out her knives and sliced away flesh that tried to grow over his nose and eyes. When he stopped breathing she opened his throat and when his heart slowed and stuttered she started it again.

When it ended he was a monster, a beast with the hooves and horns of a deer, and she was a full Spark. They were both covered in his blood as they embraced, there on the banks of the river.

‘We can never live among people now,’ said the sister. ‘But we shall always have each other.’

The found a burned out house on the edges of the twisted waste and lived there. The girl built traps around it and little monsters to guard it. They crept out onto good land to search for food at night. It was a hard life, but not an unhappy one.

Until one day the Heterodyne held a great hunt through the twisted waste. The Lord Heterodyne’s Hunters would hunt man and beast and monster alike for his sport. The sister knew this and took great pains to hide all trails to their home and all signs of their residence. When it began she and her brother sat in a corner, out of sight of any window, and she buried her hands in his coarse fur for comfort.

But as soon as he heard the cries of the hunters his ears pricked. ‘I must go!’ he said.

‘Do not go!’ she said. ‘They will hunt you!’

‘Even if they hunt me, I must go!’ He bounded out of the house on his strong hooves, running straight for the hunt, and though his sister ran after him she could not keep up.

They hunted him. He was in their wastes and he was fast and good sport. He ran from them in mixed sorrow and elation until he was ready to drop. Then he tried to lose them and go home, but the Lord Heterodyne’s Hunters are not easily lost, least of all when their Lord rides with them.

They rolled him on the ground before the house and blooded him, but checked at the scent of his blood. While they hesitated little sister set off those of her traps not near to her brother and for a moment the whole hunt foundered. When the Heterodyne had brought it back to order he found himself looking at a girl with fire in her eyes and a wounded monster at her feet.

‘I did not expect to find a witch of a girl out here,’ he said. ‘I think I will keep you. Come, be my wife.’

‘And my brother?’ said the girl. ‘I will not stand to see him used in your experiments or hunted again.’

‘I shall treat him as one of my own hunters,’ said the Heterodyne. ‘Housed, fed and paid as well as any of them, and next time he joins my hunt it will not have to be as prey.’

So the girl accepted, for it is better to be on the side of monsters than against them, and went back to the Heterodyne’s castle as its Lord’s bride.

Now, it happened that the stepmother’s own daughter broke through soon after she had driven off her step-children. While she would have been happy enough to turn her step-daughter over to the mob, she tried to hide her own child’s Spark. So when she heard that her step-daughter was married to the Lord Heterodyne, happily indulging her Spark in whatever she wished, she was angry.

‘What am I to do?’ said her daughter. ‘Everything turns out well for her and I shall likely be strung up from a tree and burned.’

‘We shall not give up hope,’ said the step-mother. ‘What she has can be yours.’

So the daughter made a potion that would cause their features to be unremarkable and they went to the Lord Heterodyne’s castle begging for work as servants. They were accepted easily enough, for the Lady Heterodyne was with child and needed attendants.

When the child was born, a healthy boy, the Heterodyne was out hunting and the Lady’s brother with him. Afterwards as she lay weak from the birth the step-mother took her hand and led her to take a bath. Once the Lady was in the tub the step-mother locked the door and she and her daughter built a fire of such heat that the Lady suffocated. They did not dare take her body far, so they buried it behind the castle. The girl then used another potion, one which would cast the illusion of her step-sister’s features, and went to take her place in the bed.

When they returned from the hunt the Heterodyne was delighted by the child. He congratulated his wife and kissed her. The brother, though, when he came to see his sister, wrinkled his nose and was not sure why her presence distressed him.

That night a ghost came to the camp where the brother lived, white with eyes of gold, and she buried her hands in his fur and hissed, ‘She shall not have my husband, she shall not have my son,’ but he shook it off as a dream and did not tell his Lord, even when she returned night after night.

Then, one night, as her cold hands buried themselves in his fur, tears dropped from her golden eyes. ‘She should not have my husband, she should not have my son, but I have only three nights and then I shall be gone.’

That morning he still did not wish to worry his Lord with a dream, but he told the hunters. So that night they all pretended to sleep, keeping watch through slitted eyes. They saw her lean over the bed, hand tugging affectionately at her brother’s ears. ‘She should not have my husband, she should not have my son, but I have only two nights and then I shall be gone,’ she said. Around her the hunters jumped from their beds but she was no longer there.

They told their Lord that day and so at night he kept watch with them.

The little brother lay in his bed, pretending to sleep with his heart racing, and soon the ghost was leaning over him. ‘She should not have my husband, she should not have my son. But I have only one more night and then I shall by gone.’

‘My wife!’ said the Heterodyne, stepping out from where he was hidden. He tried to grab her but his hands went through her. ‘Find her body!’ he shouted, eyes locked with hers as if he could hold her by sheer will.

The hunters leapt up and ran through the woods, through the castle and its surroundings, and soon they had dug up her body. It was not a new killed body and half-boiled before its burial, but the Heterodyne found muscle and skin to patch it up, and soon he had returned the ghost to her proper flesh.

The step-mother and step-daughter were torn to pieces and burned, while the Lady lived happily until she died a death she couldn’t return from. As for her brother, he may be living still.


	3. Little Constructs

_This variant of Hansel and Gretel replaces some of the concerns about food and famine in the original with concerns about Sparks and Constructs. Many people think of the Heterodyne when they think of Mechanicsburg’s Sparks, but, while powerful Sparks would be unlikely to tolerate living under the rule of a still more powerful one, Mechanicsburg produces many minor Sparks and often blurs the line between Sparks and Minions._

_— Amber Litten_

Once upon a time there was a minor Spark who lived in Mechanicsburg as a woodcutter. He had raised himself two small constructs, lacking the power to raise larger ones, and called them Fetch and Carry for that is what they did for him all day. Although they were little child constructs he wouldn’t let them play with the other children and had them always working.

After much trying he managed to raise a bigger construct, who he called Hack, for this one was big enough to chop wood by himself, and decided the little constructs were failed experiments. So he told Hack to take them out to work with him and to leave them in the forest for the wild animals to eat.

Fetch and Carry were in their room that night, unable to sleep from hunger, and when they heard this little Carry began to cry.

‘It will be all right,’ said her brother. ‘I have a plan.’ He slipped into his master’s workshop and filled his pockets with little screws.

The next day they were sent out with a small piece of bread each, following along as Hack strode towards the forest. ‘Come along,’ Hack said, eyes looking over their heads rather than at them.

‘I was waving to the gargoyles on the walls,’ said Fetch, dropping screws to glint among the stones and mud of the path.

Hack left them in a clearing and went to chop wood, telling them he would call them to carry it home. Time went on, night fell and he never called. The moon rose above them and wolves and monsters howled among the trees.

‘It’s time to go home,’ said Fetch, holding out his hand to his sister.

In the moonlight the silver screws shone and, hand in hand, the children walked home.

‘Tut, where have you been?’ said their master when he saw them, but he sent them to bed without waiting for an answer.

‘He will try again,’ said Carry, crouched by the bedroom door listening for the sounds of their master going to bed. As soon as they heard him snoring the two little constructs slipped out from their room to the door of the workshop. But, alas, it was locked.

The next day as they set out Fetch turned back again and again, scattering crumbs from the small loaf of bread he had been given.

‘Come along,’ Hack said.

‘I was waving to the Jägers at the gates,’ said Fetch.

Hack left them in a clearing again and told them to stay this time, as if they were the ones who had left the day before. For a long time they thought they heard him chopping wood, but it was only a branch tied to a tree so it would thump against it in the wind. They shared Carry’s loaf between them and made a poor meal.

Finally the moon rose and they stood up to go home. Alas, the bread had been eaten by birds, and they were truly lost.

Hand in hand they slipped through the trees, in search of any shelter they could find, crying when the wild animals howled. Thorns snagged at their clothes and their stitches and stones hurt their feet, until they were tired and sore but too afraid to stop. They were far, far from the sheltering walls of Mechanicsburg.

‘I smell gingerbread,’ said Carry, lifting her nose.

‘I think I do too,’ said Fetch. ‘But surely we’re just imagining it since we’re so hungry.’

They turned towards it though, following their noses, and as the sun rose they emerged into a clearing. At its centre was the most charming little cottage imaginable, made all of gingerbread with a frosted roof. The children walked over to it as if entranced, glanced guiltily at one another, and simultaniously broke off pieces of the windowsill.

‘Now, who is nibbling my Perfect House?’ called a voice from within.

‘Only little mice who find it too perfect to resist,’ called Fetch.

The voice cackled with laughter and out shuffled an old Spark. ‘Ah, you recognise the genius of Edible Living Quarters,’ she said, leaning on her cane. ‘And what neatly made constructs you are! Come in, children, and eat your fill. There will be more tomorrow.’

Inside the cottage there was no space not filled with cogwheels and ovens, machinery clanking overhead as the structure baked to maintain itself. At one end two mills ground out streams of flour and ginger that intermingled and fell together into a trough. Chickens clucked in the roof loft and eggs were carried down individually by a little ferris wheel, cracked by a spring loaded knife and tipped into the trough with the flour and ginger. A white stream of milk ran through a gulley in the floor. The Spark casually broke pieces from the walls and ceiling and handed them to the little constructs, who ate until they were stuffed.

‘You should stay here,’ said the Spark. ‘My skills are more culinary than biological and my Marvellous Mobile Gingerbread Man ran away — the ingrate! I could use someone to feed the chickens, milk the cow and fetch wood for the ovens.’

The children glanced at one another. ‘As long as you feed us,’ said Fetch.

‘Eat as much as you like,’ said the Spark, waving a hand dismissively. ‘The birds and animals are always eating it, anyway, that’s why I made it self-renewing.’

So Fetch and Carry lived in the gingerbread cottage and lived up to their names. They were well fed, if mostly on gingerbread and milk, and so long as they did their assigned chores the Spark didn’t seem to care what else they did, so there was even time to play.

Then, one day, Carry came back from milking the cow and her brother was nowhere to be found. The Spark was muttering and cackling over a new recipe and didn’t seem to hear Carry when she asked where her brother was. She searched through the loft, where the chickens clucked at her even though she’d already fed them. She searched the cottage, with its odd nooks behind gear systems, and then she looked into the stream of milk and saw the streak of red running through the white. The specks of blood on the gears. The smallest smear, nearly wiped away, on the table where the Spark sat and muttered.

Carry ran outside and there, on the rubbish heap, were her brother’s parts.

She sat and cried until she could cry no more, then carefully gathered him back together and stitched him up. He lay, still and dead in her arms, skin like wax. ‘Lightning,’ she murmured. ‘What raised us once can raise us again. Oh, my poor brother.’ She looked up into the sky, but it failed to answer her with even a single cloud. ‘Lightning will come,’ she whispered. ‘So close to Mechanicsburg lightning always comes.’

Inside the Spark was moulding baking trays in the shape of Fetch’s organs, planning a red velvet cake modelled on his heart, twin sponge cakes modelled on his lungs. ‘Such a neatly made little construct,’ she cackled to herself. Carry, her brother’s body hidden away outside, began to sweep the room and stoke the fires. That night she couldn’t bring herself to eat gingerbread that might contain her brother’s blood, but the Spark never seemed to notice whether she ate or not.

A week later thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed in the mountains.

Carry raised the copper piping she had stolen and welded into a lightning rod, balanced it against a tree, and connected wires from it to her brother’s head, feeling where the bolts lay under his skin. She sat there as the rain soaked her to the skin, face turned up so the drops ran down her face like tears, but she did not cry.

Lightning struck, turning the world white, then, as the tree burst into flame, flickering red and black. Fetch screamed as the jolt shocked him back to life, eyes wild and mad, but when his sister grabbed his hand he recognised her and let her lead him away from the flames until enough sense came back into his head to run from them himself.

They ran, Fetch clearing their way with unnatural strength, the flames licking behind them like a hungry beast. The smell of burning gingerbread pursued them.

They followed the storm, heading for where the lightning seemed to be striking. When they could see the silhouette of the Castle in each strike’s glow they knew they were close to home.

‘Oh ho,’ said the Jäger at the gate, grinning at them. ‘Vot iz two leedle constructs doink out at night? Who do hyu belong to?’

Carry thought of the Spark who had discarded them, of all they had been through, and broke down and howled. Fetch hugged her, in tears himself, and the Jäger looked alarmed.

‘Hey, dun’t cry… vot em Hy supposed to do?’ He looked around as if someone else might be out in the pouring rain to tell him, then shrugged. ‘Hokay, Hy em takink hyu to the seneschal’s vife. She haff keeds.’

The seneschal’s wife took one look at the two little constructs, with their ash covered faces streaked in rain and tears, and had them in dry clothes sat by the fire with soup before they knew what was happening. ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened?’ she asked.

Between sniffles the little constructs told her.

‘This is Mechanicsburg,’ said the seneschal’s wife. ‘No matter who made you, or how, you belong to the Heterodyne. If he does not discard you — and the Heterodynes do not discard us lightly — no one may.’

‘Then will the Heterodyne keep us?’ Fetch asked.

‘ _I_ will keep you,’ said the seneschal’s wife. ‘We belong to the Heterodyne, but that doesn’t mean he should be trusted with children. He will deal with your master, though.’

So the woodcutter became an experimental subject as punishment for discarding Mechanicsburgers. The little constructs were raised as children, allowed to play and learn instead of always working, and, though they never grew, they aged. When they were adults they took jobs of their choice and when they were old they died the final death peacefully.


	4. Red Riding Hood

_I listened in on a Jäger telling this story to a group of young children, itself a remarkable sight, complete with many actions and sound effects. His rendition of 'all the better to eat you with' may keep me up at night, but it delighted his audience._

_— Amber Litten_

Once there was a little girl who lived in a village near Mechanicsburg. She had a red cape that she liked to wear, so everyone called her Red Riding Hood. Her Grandma lived in the forest where she grew herbs and made medicines and potions, but one day she was sick so Little Red Riding Hood was sent to visit her with food and wine.

‘Now you must be a good girl and stay on the path,’ Red Riding Hood’s Mamma said. Do you think Red Riding Hood did that?

Ha, wrong, she did! She was trying to be a good girl, so she stuck all close to the path, and she might have got all the way to her Grandma’s cottage like that if she hadn’t met someone. Walking along the path like he was about to take a stroll into town was a huge Sparkhound.

‘Where is little girl going?’ asked the Sparkhound.

‘I’m going to visit my Grandma, who is sick in bed,’ said Red Riding Hood.

The Sparkhound sniffed at her basket, snuff snuff, and said, ‘Should bring flowers to visit sick person.’

Red Riding Hood hesitated. There were flowers near the path and she thought her Grandma _would_ like them. She might even make potions with them. So she slipped off the path to get some flowers and wandered further than she meant.

The Sparkhound ran ahead to the grandma’s house and knocked on the door with just one claw, tap tap tap, so it sounded like a little girl knocking all quiet. When Grandma opened the door he ate her _all up_. Then he put on her nightcap and glasses and got into her bed, pulling the covers up over his nose.

When Red Riding Hood arrived with her basket overflowing with flowers and knocked on the door the Sparkhound called out in a little wavery voice muffled by the covers, ‘Come in dear, is not locked.’

So Red Riding Hood came into the house and saw her Grandma all snuggled up in bed, but something didn’t feel right. ‘Grandma,’ she said. ‘What big eyes you have.’

‘All the better to see you with, my dear,’ said the Sparkhound.

Red Riding Hood put the basket down by the bed and looked again. ‘Grandma, what big ears you have.’

‘All the better to hear you with, my dear,’ said the Sparkhound.

‘And, Grandma,’ said Little Red Riding Hood, ‘what big teeth you have.’

‘All the better to EAT YOU WITH,’ said the Sparkhound, and he gobbled her all up.

Now, in the woods nearby a Jäger was walking and when he smelled a little girl and a big dog near the Grandma’s cottage he hurried along up the path. When he saw the Sparkhound all fat and smug with swallowing them whole he knew what had happened. So he growled at the Sparkhound, _grrrrr_ , and the Sparkhound growled back, _grrrrrrr_ , and the two of them fought right there in Grandma’s bedroom. But the Jäger was stronger. He dug his claws into the Sparkhound’s belly and ripped it open and out came Grandma and Red Riding Hood, holding onto each other because it was dark and scary in there.

‘Grandpa!’ said Red Riding Hood, ‘I didn’t know you were home!’

The Jäger picked her up and hugged her and then did the same to her Grandma. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I head mine sweet wife was sick.’

Then Grandma made them all have baths, bleh, even the Jäger since he’d been hugging them when they’d been in a dog, and they had dinner together.

And maybe they lived happily ever after and maybe they didn’t, but they were happy right then.


	5. As Clanks Love Grease

_This is clearly a variant of Cap o’ Rushes, The Very Dirty Shepherdess and other such tales. As with those stories it has a great deal of overlap both with Donkeyskin and with Cinderella in the main body of the tale. Local Cinderella variants, especially, show a close kinship to As Clanks Love Grease, although they lack the explanation of how a Heterodyne came to be living in demeaning circumstances. While Perrault’s ubiquitous pumpkin has made it even to Mechanicsburg, there are certain story elements that anyone familiar with Mechanicsburg variations of Cinderella will recognise here as well._

_— Amber Litten_

There was a Heterodyne who, wonder of wonders, had two daughters. One day he decided he would test their love for him, so he went to eldest and asked, ‘How much do you love me?’

‘As rich as gold and jewels, as fierce as lightning,’ she said.

The Heterodyne was pleased with this answer and went to his second daughter. ‘How much do you love me?’ he asked.

‘As clanks love grease,’ she said.

The Heterodyne was angry at being compared to something so common. He ordered her heart torn out and her body thrown from the city wall.

The girl’s older sister, although she could not gainsay her father, went out that night with a pig heart in a basket. She sewed it into her sister’s chest and gave her lightning to drink, so that soon she was more alive than she had ever been.

‘My sister,’ said the older girl. ‘Once father has made up his mind he never changes it and even having killed you he will not forgive you. You must go a long way from here. I’ve brought you a cape, to hide your fine clothes, your trilobites and your tools under. If you live quietly for now, then one day I will be Heterodyne and I will send for you.’

The younger girl wrapped the cape around herself, concealing what she wore, and kissed her sister’s cheek. ‘I shall live as quietly as any Heterodyne can,’ she said. With that somewhat dubious reassurance she left her sister and set out into the world.

She walked for many days, and with the tools and devices hidden under her cape she was able to make clanks to hunt food for her and chase off danger, but many of those clanks wandered off and even for a Heterodyne the wastelands are hard going alone. So when eventually she came to a city she determined to take work there.

Door to door she went in her tattered cape begging for work. But people in any city are wary of what comes from the wastelands and, although she kept her proud eyes on her feet, her voice rang with danger. Again and again she was turned away until finally a woman told her, ‘If you’ll work hard I’ll have you, although pay will be no more than a crust at mealtimes and a bed in the attic.’

‘It will be enough,’ she said.

So she stayed there and worked. When she didn’t work she put off her cape and pulled out her tools and built, but what she built was buried in the garden when she dug vegetables, or buried in the coal pile when she fetched coal, or tucked beneath the floorboards as she scrubbed them. The woman who took her in had two daughters, though, and they were nosy girls. One of them found her smallest death ray buried in her bedding. After that they would not let her near metal or wire and treated her worse than ever.

It so happened that the prince of that city called for a grand exhibition of Spark-work. The city was poorly defended compared to others nearby and he intended to act as patron to a Spark, showering them with wealth in return for their defending his city.

‘You are a Spark,’ said the Heterodyne girl’s mistress. ‘Make things my daughters can show, so that the prince will shower us with wealth, or I will have you chased out of this place with pitchforks.’

‘As you wish,’ said the girl.

‘ _I_ will take the deathray I found,’ said the older girl. ‘The prince will want that.’

‘Make me something better,’ said the younger girl. ‘Make me a bomb.’

So the Heterodyne girl made her a bomb.

When the family had left to attend the exhibition she put off her rags and dressed herself as a Heterodyne. She made herself a coach that walked on its own strong legs and let it carry her to the exhibition.

Everyone stared as she walked in, wearing her fine clothes and jewellery embossed with trilobites, and the King turned pale. ‘How did a Heterodyne come here? Our walls are high and our gates are shut against them.’

The prince felt like a mouse before a cobra, both terrified and enthralled, but he greeted her. ‘My lady, I am honoured by your presence. Is that your project?’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘That is only a trifle. Perhaps I shall bring my project tomorrow.’

‘I would be honoured to be your patron based on that alone,’ said the prince.

The girl laughed. ‘I am a Heterodyne, I need no patron.’

‘Then would you care to inspect the other projects with me? I am sure they don’t live up to yours, but I would value your opinion,’ said the prince.

So the prince and the Heterodyne girl talked of science through the night, but by morning she had slipped away.

The next day the King had the city walls topped with spikes and extra guards stationed at the gates. All anyone could talk of was the Heterodyne that had somehow entered the city.

The second day the Heterodyne girl’s mistress demanded walking coaches for her daughters, since one had so impressed the prince. The Heterodyne girl obeyed and soon the family was walking unevenly away in clanks they had only just learned to control.

The Heterodyne girl quickly made herself a clank that could announce and accompany her and set off to the exhibition herself.

That evening many Sparks arrived in walking clanks, enough of which fell over or exploded to cause both inconvenience and entertainment. The Heterodyne girl had her clank clear a path for her and walked in.

‘My lady, I am honoured to see you again,’ said the prince. ‘Is that your project?’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘This is just a trifle.’

‘If you do not want my patronage,’ said the prince. ‘Then do you come to court me? I would willingly marry you and make you princess of this city.’

‘I am a Heterodyne,’ said the girl. ‘If you marry me you shall be consort in _my_ city. No, I did not come to court you.’

‘Then why?’ he asked.

‘Let us not talk of that,’ she said. ‘Show me the other projects again.’

Again they talked until she was bored of the exhibition. Then he showed her those mechanisms that were already part of the palace, the pumps and engines that the city ran on. She worked on some of them, delighting in letting her Spark flow free, but while she did a trilobite ring fell from her hand. When she slipped away she did not notice she had left it behind.

‘The girl who this ring fits will be the Heterodyne girl,’ said the prince.

‘A ring may fit many fingers,’ said the King. ‘But I am as eager to find her as you. A Heterodyne in our city?’

So they went through the city, hoping the ring would reveal the wolf among their flock. Nightfall found them still looking and at that moment there was a great creaking. From the vegetable garden and the coal heap and beneath the floorboards, leaving her mistress’ house in splinters, came an army of clanks made by the Heterodyne girl, with her riding on the foremost.

‘ _This_ is my project,’ she said. ‘And if you were my patron or my husband I would be obliged to defend your city with it. But instead I shall take your city as my own. Bow to me or perish.’

So, having been cast out of Mechanicsburg, the girl won herself a city.

Now that the city was hers she worked hard improving its defences and built it a great army of clanks. Then she called for a messenger and gave him two letters. ‘This one is for my sister, give it to her in secret,’ she said. ‘And this one is for my father, inviting him to dine here, give that to him openly.’

When the Heterodyne heard his daughter was alive and well, ruling her own city, he was furious and declared war on her at once.

‘Rouse my army!’ he called to his remaining daughter. ‘We shall leave not one stone upon another!’

‘How have the Jägers displeased you that you would send them against Heterodyne blood?’ said his daughter. ‘Do you fear you cannot defeat my sister without them?’

‘Leave the Jägers, then,’ he said. ‘I need fear no one in the world! Ready my battle clanks.’

So he rode out with a great clank army while his daughter drew up her own clank army around her city, the civilians cowering inside their houses and cursing their luck to be caught in a quarrel between Heterodynes.

Meanwhile the Heterodyne’s oldest daughter spoke to the Jägers and brought them along to the battlefield in secret so that the night before the battle was to be fought they crept out and wiped and licked every speck of grease from the Heterodyne’s clanks.

The next day the clanks on both sides roared into life, only to squeal and seize a moment later, stuttering and falling apart where they stood. For the girl had put no grease on her own clanks either.

‘Is this a war?’ cried the Heterodyne as his clanks shook their joints apart.

‘It need not be,’ said his banished daughter, approaching him fearlessly through the pile of shuddering clanks. ‘For you see how I love you.’

The Heterodyne looked at the mess of gears and parts their armies were becoming, threw back his head and laughed. ‘You have made your point, girl,’ he said. ‘And I am sorry for killing you.’

‘Then you may have the city,’ she said. ‘And I will come home.’


End file.
